


Wake to Sanity

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Auror Harry Potter, F/M, Healer Parvati Patil, Kissing, Possessive Behavior, Post-Hogwarts, Potions Accident, Sad Ending, Severus Snape Lives, St Mungo's Hospital, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:41:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29626476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Severus and Parvati are thrown together in the midst of chaos. Parvati's emotions are running high, but can Severus forget about his love for Lily long enough to see what's in front of him?
Comments: 15
Kudos: 15
Collections: Tag(line) You're It! Competition





	Wake to Sanity

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Tagline_Youre_It_Comp_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Tagline_Youre_It_Comp_2020) collection. 



> Prompt:
> 
> “Love never Dies.” ( Bram Stoker’s Dracula)
> 
> Apocalypse: Coworkers

She didn’t know why she was so nervous, her heart pounding in her chest and threatening to break free of it entirely. She hadn’t done anything wrong. But she felt guilty anyway. Shame seeped into her bones the more she thought about the day, the more she thought about him. 

“You don’t have to be scared,” Harry told her, sitting across from her in his official Auror robes- a special badge she didn’t recognize over his chest. He almost worked to calm her. She relaxed just a moment until those eyes flashed through her mind. That kiss. 

“Sorry,” she muttered absentmindedly. “It’s been a long day.”

He shot her a lopsided smile, understanding and sincerity coming off of him in waves as it always did; minus the angst of their school days. “That’s alright. Take a moment and breathe. I just want to hear it from your perspective. Would you like a glass of water?”

Parvati nodded hastily, only realizing as he suggested it that her mouth was dry. She moistened her lips as the house elf- Hermione help her, she didn’t hear their name- placed a tall glass of water on the table in front of her. Before she could even consider doing differently, she’d grabbed it and drank half in a single gulp. 

_ He _ might have suggested it could have been poisoned, or potioned with Veritaserum, or something equally as awful to a lifelong spy; but she had nothing to hide, except for that one secret that burned through her head, and she could only be so lucky for it to be poisoned after the day she had had. 

Harry started the Quick Notes Quill onto the parchment and began, looking at it and not her, “Head Auror Harry James Potter with Parvati Ananya Patil regarding the events of Tuesday, February 13th 2005.”

The quill scribbled away as he went until he looked back up at her. Her heart lept again and her stomach turned, her hands fidgeting in her lap under the table. 

“If you could start at the beginning.”

* * *

  
He came on Tuesdays.

She went through the week, attending patients and answering to her superiors- which often felt like everyone else in the hospital- waiting for Tuesday. When he would come and they would spend the day in the basement, her watching him create his potions for liability’s sake. 

He didn’t talk a lot, in fact, sometimes he barely said two sentences to her- both for work purposes- but the air was pleasant between them, and comfortable. Sometimes, she would talk and he would listen without seeming bothered at all, occasionally offering wonderful insults for whomever she might be complaining about. Other times he would talk with her, back and forth about small things. 

Big things didn’t matter on Tuesdays.

* * *

  
“The incident, Parvati,” Harry reminded her when she trailed off, thinking of him and how he came sweeping into the Potions laboratory, despite the lack of the billowing robes he’d once worn so religiously. “When did you first realize things were not as they should be?”

“There was screaming,” she said, hearing it echo now in her mind hours later. “Professor Snape and I were focused on Potions because the hospital has been running low on Pepper Up, what with the flu that’s been going around. There was screaming and he-”

Harry frowned, and sort of tilted his head. “Yes?”

* * *

  
  
The screams were muffled and at the same time, she knew they would be loud if the door wasn’t closed and the basement wasn’t so closed off from the world. 

It had been one of those perfect days, consisting of a back and forth about her superiors and what pompous asses all of them were. She’d been sitting on a clear table, which he commented on every time, and the sound spiked in her chest. She and Severus both- she only called him that in her mind- looked over towards the door, and she slid off of the table carefully. 

Again. 

There was another scream, and then a series of them, and Parvati was frozen- her feet soldered to the floor.

She’d forgotten, somehow, how perfectly screams pervade the air and sink into her skin. Her heart seized in her chest at the sound and she felt sick to her stomach, taking two steps away from the steps up to the door and towards Severus.

Someone screamed right outside the door, and the knob rattled a moment before it stopped.

“Where’s your wand?” He demanded behind her, closer than he’d been a moment ago. His voice sounded like it used to when he was her teacher, leaving no room for her fear to distract her from answering, and she wondered if he’d done that on purpose. 

“H-here,” she told him as calmly as she could, drawing it from her wrist holster. His was already in his hand as he passed her, heading slowly and carefully to the door.

* * *

  
  
“Don’t open it,” she said behind him. 

She was scared. Her eyes were wide when he looked, staring at the door while looking as though she wanted to hide behind him. 

“Please,” she whimpered, shrinking into herself. “W-we should stay here and wait for the Aurors. Don’t open it.”

He knew that most people didn’t have the same pull he did, the same pull he was sure that Potter and his friends had, that called him to attention, to action, at the sound of screaming. He could recognize in theory, but there was a disconnect in his mind that prevented him from understanding. 

He hesitated, seeing her tremble and withdraw. He almost compromised and told her to stay here and lock the door behind him, but he knew her now enough to know she’d hate herself for the cowardice it would take to accept that offer. 

A whisperer sang low in the deep crevices of his mind another reason he didn’t tell her to stay, but he’d gotten used to ignoring that voice- that sounded so much like  _ Her. _

“And if someone is hurt and needs help?”

Her resolve softened on her face and she tightened her grip on her wand, drawing it closer to her. Of course, that line  _ would _ work. She was so much like.. someone else. The idea that someone needed her help always set  _ Her _ heart to bleeding.

“Alright,” she relented quietly. “But, I don’t know any- I mean. I remember what Harry taught, but-”

“That ought to be sufficient,” he told her, trying to soothe her nerves before they dived into an unknown situation. As though he’d let harm come to Her. “Now stay close to me. We don’t know what’s on the other side.”

She nodded and skirted to his side. He could feel her behind him, warm as she should be. Severus mentally mapped the easiest route to the exit from the lab and loathing whatever dunderhead decided to design a hospital with only one real entrance. There were Floos in a few offices, and an Apparation room near the street entrance with a public Floo, but the knowledge of them didn’t help his sudden claustrophobia. 

He opened the door.

* * *

  
  
Chaos, remarkably similar to the Final Battle was waiting for them and Parvati grabbed Severus’ arm tight, not caring that the connection made her stomach twist. Or maybe it was the sight of blood streaked across the floor. 

People were running past them, and at first it seemed as though everyone were running away from something or someone. Some of them were, but there was a crazed look to the rest of them that told a different story. They were all attacking each other rather than running from one attacker as she’d imagined in the few seconds she’d had to think of worst case scenarios before he opened the door. She went to move around him, but Severus grabbed her and pulled her away just as a body was thrown into the air she was previously occupying. 

“Do you smell that?” 

She looked up at him, his arms still around her, but he was looking away and pulling her closer still without seeming to realize it. She could see on his face that something was wrong, her hands on his chest and trying to commit every millisecond to memory as it happened.

“Smell what?” she asked, delayed and remembering now he’d said something. Something that caused those two small lines to form between his brows. She imagined smoothing them out with her thumb.

“Peppermint,” he growled, and she could feel it reverberate under her fingers. He looked around angrily as if trying to find the source. “I smell peppermint. Bubblehead charms, now.”

She hesitated a moment, blinking and lost in the fog that somehow connected whatever was going on with the seemingly arbitrary smell of peppermint. He snarled impatiently and erected it for her before doing his own. She went to speak but he ran over her, pulling her to the wall and casting Notice Me Not charms over them both. 

“We need to call the Aurors immediately. Patronus’ can’t travel outside of the hospital, can they?”

“Not since-”

“Ridiculous rule. That’s exactly the sort of thing that gets people killed. This is a hospital for Merlin’s sake. Are you telling me those idiots couldn’t foresee a day they might need-”

“Severus!” She cut him off nervously, still standing close to him and looking about at the absolute anarchy around them. “Why is peppermint so important?”

He stopped and looked down at her, half in surprise she’d interrupted him- with his name no less- and half with impatience. “Sweet peppermint is the smell you’ll get should you brew any of the most common love potions, and that sweet peppermint becomes overpowering and not so sweet should you brew it wrong. This is what happens if you don’t realize you made the potion wrong. Their impulses are gone. Right now everyone is fighting with that monster in everyone’s head telling them to do awful things, but their only weapon against it has been stolen.”

Murder, was the first thought that came to mind. 

She wondered, she remembered distinctly, at Hogwarts how people like Tom Riddle and Bellatrix Lestrange could murder as they did without any care in the world. Did they not have that voice in their heads telling them not to? Was this, the war in front of her, how they felt all the time?

“Okay,” she said. “What do we do?”

“We need to find our way to an open Floo or an exit and alert the authorities. Until they arrive, we’ll need to contain this as best we can. If I could smell it even for a moment before we charmed ourselves, then the potion is likely airborne. We should assume everyone in the hospital is affected.”

She wasn’t listening. Right now, just behind him, a Healer that Parvati recognized but couldn’t place was choking the life out of a woman she didn’t know. 

“Leave her alone,” she heard herself say, stumbling forward. Like she was underwater. Then louder. “Leave her alone!”

Parvati grabbed him and tried to pull him off of her, but he shoved her off easily and someone else grabbed her around the middle. At first, she thought it was Severus, but their grip was too hard- pulling at her Healer robes pulling her down to the floor. There was a sharp pain and she inhaled, she could hear it. Then he was gone, and Severus was there and holding her to him, turning back to her attacker with a murderous look on his face. He raised his wand.

“Wait! Don’t hurt him!”

* * *

“He’ll hurt someone else.”

He could feel the once familiar possessive rage roar through him as soon as he’d seen the other man’s hands on her, and whether the stranger might hurt someone else or not, Severus felt the overwhelming urge to kill him for it. His wand was raised towards the momentarily disoriented man in a Healer’s lime green robes, the words already on his tongue.

And then her hand was soft on his arm, gently pushing it back down, her eyes desperate. 

“You can’t! You just told me they weren’t in their right minds. It’s not his fault if the potion is doing this. Would you kill someone for something they were forced to do under the Imperius?”

He had, and he almost said so, but there was a wrinkle in her forehead between her eyebrows he was hoping to avoid. He’d just as soon kill someone for disappointing and disgusting her as he knew he would if he answered her. 

He lowered his wand and she raised her own to the stranger, who was now fighting with the other man they’d seen, and incarcerated them both. 

She was too soft, as  _ She _ had been, and a blossom of warmth came over his chest quickly followed by an icy promise that she wouldn’t meet the same fate. 

“We should go,” he said lowly, looking around at the chaos that now seemed to be happening around them as though the two of them were hidden behind a shield. “We cannot take everyone with only the two of us. We need to alert the DMLE. Where is the nearest Floo? Not the public one. That area would be too crowded by people not in their right mind.”

She glanced back towards the main part of the hospital, teeth holding the tip of her tongue hostage as she thought. 

“Healer Pye’s office is the closest. He has a Floo I think, but he was just complaining that he was always out of Floo powder.”

Severus grabbed her wrist as the war around them started raging in earnest, pulling her in the opposite direction. “I have some, just direct me.”

* * *

  
“I shouldn’t have left those people there,” she professed to Harry, desperate to let someone know that she knew her mistake. “I shouldn’t have left them defenceless.”

“You can’t think about that now,” he told her gently. 

“It’s all I can think about,” she whispered, staring at a spot on the table between them. “I left there to be- are they alright? Did you find them?”

Harry cleared his throat and drew back away from the table, glancing at the door and then back, avoiding her gaze. “We did.”

“And?”

“One of them was able to get out of his bonds and-” 

“And?” She repeated, leaning forward. 

Harry met her eyes. “And we were not able to save the other after the damage he did. He’s currently in detainment getting his wounds healed while he waits to be questioned.”

Parvati clenched her fist, her nails biting into the flesh of her palm, and felt her face heat up. She didn’t want to cry, tightening her fist harder to fight it back.

* * *

  
“Patil! Snape! Thank Merlin someone else in this hospital is thinking straight.”

Healer Lightoller was a tall, lean sort of man with a reddish face that only got darker the longer the day seemed to get, or perhaps the longer he had to deal with her. Severus had once call him a pathetic brewer, which had made her smile after Lightoller had spent an hour berating her on her absentmindedness. 

He was wearing a bubblehead charm as well, running to meet them with an end-of-the-day flushed face. His robes were mussed and ripped in one place. 

“You smelled the-”

“Peppermint, yes. Burned my nose when I came from the lavatory. Have you come across any others?”

Severus spoke for her, still holding her close as though he expected another attack. “None that were unaffected. We were on our way to alert the Aurors.”

It was loud. The entire hospital seemed to pulse with adrenaline and sound, people screaming on other parts of the building, but the three of them seemed to be in a bubble that muted it all. 

“Pye’s Floo is unlocked, I believe. Go! I have to secure the maternity ward.”

Augustus Pye’s office was open and the desk overturned as though there was some struggle and he had to leave abruptly. She hoped he was alright. He was always nice to her.   
  
Severus pulled a handful of Floo Powder from one of his pockets and threw it into the fire, calling out firmly, “Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

“DMLE, Bright speaking.”

Parvati appeared at his side, crouched beside him and speaking calmer than she had been. “This is Healer Patil at St. Mungo’s. There’s been an incident and we need Aurors here now. There is an unknown potion in the air that seems to be making everyone lose their minds. People are attacking each other and-”

“Hold, please.”

She frowned at the hearth, and he watched that familiar fire form in her eyes. “Hold? No! People are getting hurt!”

“Parvati?”

“Harry?!”

“Drusilla said there’s something happening.”

Severus growled at the sound of Potter’s voice, and more at the relief that formed on her face when she heard it. “There’s a potion on the loose, Potter. Bring your Aurors, bring anyone with Healer training, and get your arse here now.”

There was silence.

“Yes, sir. We’ll be right there, sir. Er, you two should come over to safety, and we’ll take things from here.”

The fire faded but stayed lit, and he pulled her to her feet. She looked up at him, her eyes shining. In the light of the fire, they looked green, and he took Her face in his hands.

And he placed his lips on Hers.

* * *

Kissing him was as perfect as she’d imagined it would be, only more so. His lips were so soft, moving against hers, and her heart lifted- raising her arms to his neck to pull him closer. 

Parvati cried out at the sudden familiar pain in her side and she broke away from him, her hand instinctively going to it. That only made it hurt worse and she looked down, a brownish rust colour expanding fast over her robes. The fire made odd shapes with it, the shadows dancing over her and growing. 

“Severus, I-”

The sight of it made her head fuzzy, fading in and out until her knees buckled beneath her. He was there to catch her, his face in her vision only for a moment until there was darkness and the last thing she heard was his voice. 

“Lily!”

* * *

  
“He stabbed me,” she said hollowly. “That man that had grabbed me before. At least that what I was told when I woke up here. I’m meant to go home after you release me and rest. Don’t suppose I’ll be going into work tomorrow.”

“We will keep everyone updated, but right now the hospital is closed off and everyone is being diverted to private clinics.” He stopped the Quick Notes Quill and signed her statement, sliding it to her across the table. “If you could look that over and sign at the bottom, please.”

She stared at it, eyes roving and unable to distinguish the words, but he was looking at her and waiting. Parvati signed it anyway, her hand numb like the left side of her body from the potion they gave her. 

“Have you found out who it was that caused all of this? Whoever brewed that potion to start?”

“I’m afraid I’m not able to talk about an ongoing case,” he shrugged apologetically. “But I’ll let you know what I can when I can, alright? Do you need an escort home?”

“No, I- I’m fine. Thank you.”

He stood up with her, an arm gesturing towards the door politely. “Take care of yourself, Parvati.”

He walked her through the maze of hallways to Atrium- wild and loud and full of people who took too bright pictures and shouted at Harry for information, and then at her until it became obvious she wasn’t paying any attention. 

What time was it? Her cat probably needed to be fed. She hoped Padma and Lavender weren’t worried. Had they heard what happened? 

She walked slowly, wobbly to an open Floo and remembered Severus’ face when he caught her. When he called her-

She’d known. Everyone knew about Severus Snape and the sacrifices he’d made for love. She remembered thinking how romantic a notion it was, and how much she’d have loved to be loved like that. The way he loved Lily.

* * *

Severus saw the moment she noticed him in the busy atrium. She stopped just the mouth of the fireplace and looked at him, a tired and somewhat jaded expression on her face. 

He’d thought he lost her. When she’d fallen, and he saw the blood, his first thought had been that he lost Her again. Always Her. 

From this distance, he could see that her eyes were brown, a dark brown where before they’d been bright and warm, and he realized how right he was. He had lost them both, and once again he was left only with memories of warm eyes and caring smiles- her red hair whipping around her face as she laughed and ran from him. 

He watched her turn away from him and step into the fire.


End file.
